


Avatar Shayin

by ImperfectSilence



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: But not bashing either, Disability- hearing loss, Earth! Avatar, Gen, I'm going to try my best to represent fairly, Not really korra friendly, OC Avatar, Oops, Please correct me if I do something wrong, Post LOK, Probably not comic compliant, Writing Splurge 2020, headcanon and expansion of universe, honestly, told myself no writing tonight
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26907217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImperfectSilence/pseuds/ImperfectSilence
Summary: Her family had long known the avatars in one form or another, and her parents called that a blessing. But, stick around something long enough and it takes a liking to you. Korra vanished into the spirit world with her lover and never came out. In the tense peace of avatarlessness, no one knows what comes next. Until suddenly, one otherwise uneventful afternoon, it's confirmed that Korra has passed away, and been gone a while now. How does the world react, now knowing that there is a new untrained avatar?
Kudos: 3





	1. Growing Moss: a guide in slow and easy nurturing feat. Rockslides

**Author's Note:**

> I kid you not, I told myself I was not going to write tonight. But, I'm lying in bed trying to sleep and this thing won't stop knocking on my head demanding to be written. Enjoy.
> 
> One of my biggest influences in Avatar fandom has been Vathara's masterpiece Embers, which I highly recommend reading as it is mind-blowing. That said, some of the concepts or lore backstory from their work might bleed through to this in which I wanted to give credit to them for. Thier work is amazing, but this story is canon for everything unless I state otherwise. Truly, amazing work of fiction and it has been a huge influence on my view of Avatar. End disclaimer.

Shayin’s family had long been blessed, her parents told her. Her family had known nearly every avatar in loving memory in one form or another. A great aunt the aide to one of Kyoshi’s generals. A great cousin had been pulling up defenses to his cabin against advancing fire nation troops when roku touched down and washed them back. Her grandfather and his father had stood by the side of the avatar when he was the last of his people, the air nomads. And her own parents had stood against Korra as part of Kuvira’s army. But, hang around something long enough and it’ll invite itself in after a while.

As was the case with Shayin. She was born unassuming, in the uncertain times. Korra was a liked avatar by the older crowd, but much of the younger generation wasn’t as much a fan. No one could blame them, after all, she was the abandoner. Korra saved the world, but shortly after took her lover and disappearedinto the spirit world, never to be seen again. This left the world in a state of uncertainty and unease; when would they know the next avatar was born? How would they find the next avatar? What would they do if they needed the avatar?

All the questions remained unanswered, and the peace, tough tenuous at times, held. The fractured earth kingdom slowly worked itself back together, through treaty and trade deals, or more often small brush wars. Small conflicts, kept contained for fear of outside interference. The water tribes reunified even stronger, a political marriage emerging not long after the avatar’s disappearance that lead to a united tribe.

As for the fire nation, times were not so easy. The once proud nation, unified in conquest of the greater world fractured from within, breaking into clans and warlords, who after a short period of fighting, resigned themselves to raiding and piracy. Peace, tenuous, but holding.

Shayin was born a bender, as was common in her family. Her branch of the twisting tapestry were miners of jade and precious gems. They had a knack for finding small bits of potential in the buried masses of mountains, of acute senses and precise, careful movements. She was happy, following her father’s trade. They along with another dozen families roved the mountain range, digging and searching for veins of value.

It was on one of these expeditions that her destiny came calling. She and her father were delving into one of the older tunnels, seeking a branch to split off into. He had a good feeling about the path they were cautiously pushing. They had started slow, but after a few meters, her dad turned, “can you feel it?”

“No, papa.” Shayin, shook her head.

“Close your eyes and feel carefully, my daughter. There! On the edge of your senses. Can you feel the shimmer?” he asks her quietly.

“I- I do.” She says, smiling, “You were right. I can feel the jade!” He ruffles her hair and pushes the tunnel deeper with an errant fist.

“Let’s get closed and see how big our strike is, hm?” They push on, excitement making them not as careful, not as wary of the dangers in the deep of the mountain. This is deeper than Shayin has gone before in a new tunnel, and she shakes off the pressure behind her eyes, dismissing it as psychological. The next shove of earth they bend crashes through something and she coughs on the cloud of dust. Even after the dust clears, she’s still having trouble catching her breath. The urge to cough is still there.

“Pape,” she starts to say, and he turns back. 

“we’re almost there, shayin. I can feel the strike. It’s massive.” He says voice full of wonder as he tenses and punches the dirt in front of him. Shayin reaches out, desperately, the knowlage hitting her all at once.

She watches as if in slow motion the earth shoot forward, grinding in on itself. She sees the stones swirl and grate on each other, feels them catch and grind until something gives and a glowing shard of rock splits off into the air. The glowing shard dims for a moment before light blooms from the air in front of her father, and all she can feel is pressure throwing her backward. The flash burns white and she loses her sense of self, of being in the explosion.

The other miners, those who survived, tell her later what it looked like.

“It felt like a volcano.” One of them says quietly, “The earth under our feet shaking and twisting and roaring.”

“Like the waves during a autumn storm. The slope just slid down, crashed over the houses and the trees and everything. Washing it all down the slopes.”

“The top just came down. Our network of tunnels, the delicate spiderways we carved out came crashing down as if turned to water. It pancaked down, like a balloon being popped.”

“You flew out of the tunnels like a cork from a bottle. Faster than we could blink you went flying, right up into the clouds. We thought you dead, until you came down. Glowing. On a swirling ball of air.”

“Shayin, you are the new avatar.”

Kyoshi, the last earth woman to be avatar, would lose a boulder to hold the mountain still. I could barely hold a boulder still, much less a mountain. But, balance ten thousand grains of sand, one atop another, that I could do. Make them shuffle and fall in a way that draws out the face of the last earth queen? Challenging, but with some practice doable. My teachers were pleased to have a dutiful pupil such as I, though they were a little concerned by how late a development I was. Avatar Aang had been told who he was early on, and Korra manifested her bending barely out of diapers. I hadn’t been proven an earthbender until I was nine, and hadn’t bent any other element until I was in that accident at 15. The traditional age to teach an avatar was 16, which dovetailed nicely.

For all Korra did to progress the world, she fell to heavily into embracing technology and forgetting the traditions and older practices. And as teachings fell out of style, the spirits long placated by the rituals and respect were disturbed. Hei Bei rewoke and fought a crew trying to cut a path through its forest. There were ambassadors on both sides, arguing and placating and debating, and a peace was reached, but had the workers performed the rites before cutting, the destruction would never have happened.

My family has always prayed to the mountain spirits, left offerings for the dead. Some thought us weird, but when our home was the only one not to wash away in a monsoon they stopped heckling us about our piety. I was not about to stop respecting the spirits, even if I was the avatar. Yes, it added time to the day as I stopped to pray to Agni at noon, or to ask for La’s guidance before water bending practice. My Earthbender teacher was not happy about the delays, but all of his efforts to move me were fruitless. I suspect my firebending teacher was likewise annoyed, but better at holding his tongue. The legendary Ikki of course, was happy to join me when time allowed, but she was constantly pulled in every direction by her duties finding and transporting new airbenders. Master Nomak, my waterbending teacher did not practice and pray like me, but had no issue with my doing so.

The Grandmaster of the White Lotus, Bolin, confessed that it was a relief to have things come back to normal, per say. It had been a concern of the previous grandmasters that the avatar cycle had been thrown in such disarray. Master Iroh, in particular, was not pleased at the Air Nomads jumping the traditional period of growth. But, ancient history is ancient history.

I am nearly to my sixteenth nameday, and my training has not been long still. I will pull things back to normal, as best as I can. Well, and what I think normal is. Much has been lost over the years about the Avatars.

“Shayin, young avatar, come with me. You have firebending practice. Master Ryoshu is ready to teach you something new.” One of the lotus members tells me, and I bow to him, rising from the small shrine.

“Thank you.”

“Shayin, you’re late.” Ryoshu snaps as I get to the top of the bluff.

“I apologize, master.” I bow.

“None of that today. We need to move quickly before the storm passes too far away. Come here.” He instructs.

“But, Master, I haven’t invoked Agni’s bless-“

“No time! You can pray after I walk you through this.” He snaps, before sighing. “Look, we won’t even move flame. I promise you can pray to Agni before we really try it.”

“Alright.” I agree, walking over to the edge where he waits.

“Close your eyes.” He says, “can you feel it? In the air. Little bits of energy, drifting on the winds.”

“Like, sparks.” I say.

“Exactly!” he says, pleased, “Try and reach out and pull them- Gently! Too much and they’ll fight like fire always does. But if you’re slow and careful you can call them to you. Try it, in with the breath, out and release.”

In the end, my precise nature and control betrayed me in the worst way. Ryoshu was walking me through the first stages of lightning bending. A once exclusive right, kept to the royal fire nation family alone, the secret guarded jealously. They thought I would be perfect to learn it, and the first avatar to master it. Korra had learned how, once, but she was clumsy, her blasts massive and overwhelming. The late Princess Azula, crazy as she was, could fry the wings off a fly at a ten paces if she wanted to. Korra was lucky to hit the same continent as she was aiming for. Aang simply didn’t have the aptitude after his experiences with it, and none would blame him for it. (That and toph grew vicious if she felt you use it around him. She once metal bent a chain onto the person and sent the other end into the lighting.)

The teaching started off simple, moving my chi, flowing it in the correct patterns, separating it and swirling the two flows opposite each other. Connecting to the floating bits of potential lingering form the summer storm. Twisting the energy around until it coiled and fought to be released. I was a natural at it, and that is what did me in. Careful to not let me use it without being ready, and to keep his promise, Ryoshu told me to hold the energies in. I tried, but as we practiced over and over, moving my chi, repeating the exercise the energy built and built and built.

We ran though it one more time, and he reach ed to demonstrate, but I had gathered too much, had been too good at charging the air. The energy I had been building up could only be held back so long before it would erupt out of me. And, adding one more surge of power was too much. In the middle of his kata, his fingers sparking, lightning erupted. A massive arc leapt from my coils into the air and into his careful balance, shattering the delicate control. It crackled and erupted from us both, the blast recoiling and redirecting, torn in three directions- the storm where we pulled from, the direction Ryoshu was bending it to and me, desperately trying to hold it in. Ryoshu barely managed to cut his chi from the bolt and gather a shield of flame protecting himself. The others, caught unprepared, were blown back by the force of the detonation. I was tossed by the explosion, crashing into the ground, ears ringing and limbs spasming as volts poured through me. I heard shouts and panic and a loud ringing in my ears until I didn’t anymore.

It was the last thing I ever heard.


	2. Aftershocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The result of the accident, and what comes next for our young avatar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I accidentally deleted chapter one and had to reupload it. Sorry!

“The Avatar is wounded.” Nomak said, facing the other Lotus members. I couldn’t hear him, but I could read lips.

“Will she recover?” Ryoshu asks, bandaged and barely staying awake.

“It doesn’t look likely. That was a lot of energy she pulled in without trying. And she held onto as much as she could- the blast knocked her control off and she let go of it. Inside of her still. She’s lucky to be alive and this intact. Benders are sturdy, and avatars even more so, but that was more than any human should have been able to take.” Nomak said.

“Can she be taught?” one of the Lotus asks.

“Probably. But she’ll never be the bender she could have been. She can’t hear anything. We don’t know what else the blast destroyed, but the head is delicate- like spinning snow sugar. And she’s still got lightning chakra swirling up there. It’s dangerous to try and heal anything. One wrong move and she could get fried, or I could.” He looks at the other members. “The world has made do for fifty years without an avatar. We can manage until the next one is old enough.”

“What are you suggesting?” Ryoshu says darkly, his eyes growing a bit wider and his posture tighter as he pulled on his chi.

“I suggest nothing.” Nomak says, holding his hands up in surrender, “But people aren’t meant to hold that much lighting. Not to be morbid, but she’s likely not going to live more than a decade as is. Being unable to hear is already difficult as is, but to be the avatar as well- a decade may have been optimistic.”

I can’t hear anything, but I can feel the tears rolling from my eyes and the sniffles as my nose runs. Less than a decade to live. I wish things could go back, that Papa never found that vein. That I was just an earthbending girl, loved and accepted by her family. That I could just do what I was doing and that I never found anything else. Why did it have to be me? Why did it cost papa his life?

“Hey, shhh.” Ikki says something to comfort me but of course I don’t hear, and in my sobbing, I don’t see her approach. I jump when she puts her arms around me and pulls me close. Once I figure out who it is, I accept the comfort and cry into her shoulder. I can’t see or hear it, but I can feel her chest moving as she tears into the Lotus members.

They don’t share any more with me, not in my sight. No one talks about my injury beyond Nomak, who comes in daily to check on the energy. Ikki spends every afternoon with me, helping me practice as I heal up. Air is something I can use with about the same skill as before, that is to say I’m still terrible. Barely able to ruffle the curtains. I’m not sure, but I think since my hearing is gone I have gotten worse, there just wasn’t much progress to setback.

Master Ryoshu comes in three days after the accident, his bags packed. He explains that he’s being reassigned elsewhere as punishment. As my teacher, he should have caught the level of power I was building and stopped me. I was sad to see him go, but there wasn’t anything I could do.

“I’m sorry.” I told him, as he was walking out. He turned back and smiled for a moment, “Me too.”

The first assassination attempt came two days later. A hornet viper was let into my room. Of course, I couldn’t hear it’s rattle of warning. Only some quick footwork and a blast of fire saved me. This was not the first attempt, but it was the closest since I was formally named avatar. And the first since the accident. The attempts didn’t stop, or even slow down despite how many security measures they implemented. After the hornet viper, someone slipped acid into the washbasin. I burned my left hand before I knew what was happening. A rockslide, bandits, a troupe of archers, razors in the bread- the attacks only got more dangerous and more frequent.

Things came to a head nine days after the accident that cost me my hearing. Well, nine or ten. I was taken in the middle of the night. Knocked out every time I awoke, unable to tell where the blow was coming from. When they finally turned me loose and let me stay conscious, I found the instigator.

“You!” Master Hong stood by the cage, his earth gauntlets wrapped around his arms, “Why?”

He sneered, “You’re useless now. Went and blew yourself up. Maybe if you trained more and prayed less, you’d be intact. Our people need an Avatar. The world is tearing itself apart and you can’t do a thing to stop it. It was harder to get you out of the camp then it was to keep you pacified. You’re defenseless! You can’t even hear the boulder I’m holding over your head, not even when it’s been raining rocks for three minutes!” I look up and don’t see any rock. Looking back, his fist hits me in the chest.

“Made you-” is all I read before his lips are gone. The waves of earth are relentless, and I can barely sense the boulders he throws before they hit me. It’s everything I can do to dig my feet in and defend. Hong is relentless, battering my walls and shattering my attacks before they go anywhere. Boulders pummel me from all sides, swinging around to crash over my bulwarks from every direction, forcing me to constantly turn and intercept something from yet another direction.

With how fast my defenses are crumbling I’ve only got one choice, “Oma and Shu, guide my feet to be true and my fists strong.” I pray before flipping the rock and burrowing underground. Normally going underground against an earthbending master is the worst thing you could do. But I have no choice, and there’s a slight change I’m better at tunneling than he is. Hong stomps on the dirt, flattening and crushing everything in twenty meters, but I slip through cracks in the shale and limestone, worming though weak points. He stomps again and twists, wrenching a hole in the ground down to me, diving down to follow me into the dark. I’m barely ahead of him, Hong able to rip holes through the rock and caves that I have to worm around. We drop into caverns, breaking through the ceiling and splashing down in a small pool of water. It’s pitch black- no one can see a thing.

Seismic reading isn’t my strongest skill, and I barely catch the rock he sends hurtling toward me in time. But, I’m not constrained to earth down here. Every move he makes sends the small water sloshing. I can’t hear him moving, but I can feel the water shift. I pull up a wall of earth, buying a moment to concentrate and pull the water around our feet into the air. The surface explodes into a thick mist, clinging to everything in the entire cave. Now we are on equal ground.

` Able to read his moves and see what he is doing, I’m able to dodge some of his attacks and return fire. It’s not much, a half proficient earthbender against a master, but I am the avatar. So I cheat. When he pauses to wait for my next move I hit him with a double bending attack. Air makes him think I’m sending a wave his way, when I really use the water to freeze him in place. As soon as he realizes the trick he fights, but I can pile more and more water on him ad freeze it. Every wave adds more and more ice, slowing him further and further, until he’s almost completely encased.

“I’m not a useless avatar. And I’ll help our people, just as I will help everyone else. It’s what avatars do. This,” I say, tapping my ear, “won’t stop me.”

The only warning I get is a slight bit of light in the cave before a fire blast hits me right in the back. I whirl around, rolling in the water to put the flames out, rising to my feet to see-

“I’m sorry, Little avatar, but Hong’s people aren’t the only ones who need a functioning avatar.” Ryoshu.

“Why?” I demand, unable to take them both. Ryoshu made quick work of my ice sculpture, freeing Hong.

“The current administration can hold on for about another decade before things flashover. A new avatar will only be ten, but,” he shrugs, “Within a single cycle the last one was ten too. Hell, he saved the world. I really am sorry, Shayin, but you have a duty to the world as avatar to do what’s best for it. And what’s best for the world right now is to die and let a real avatar be born. A whole one, not damaged.” They both fall into stances, ready to cast flame and rock my wave.

Nervously, I take my own stance. I barely held off Hong. No way can I take down two of them. At my feet, the water laps back and forth.

“Going to try some fancy water trick? Hong sneers, “Go ahead. Have the first shot.” But it isn’t me pulling the water. It’s code! I start waving my arms, careful not to pull on the water myself as I decipher the code.

B-R-E-A-T-H-E-D-E-E-P

Wha- putting the pieces together I suck in a breath and wait. Down the tunnel from above a hurricane smashes into the cave. Air pressure plasters us to the walls, snuffing the fire Ryoshu had in his hand. Before Hong can move I clench my fingers in the stone and twist, Covering Ryoshu’s arms in stone. Hong is too strong for me to overpower his control of the rock around him. The water at our feet surges and pulls, defying the overpressure of the wind. It sucks me up and crawls up the shaft, pulling me to the surface.

“Shayin!” Ikki says, relaxing her gale from pouring down the hole. “We came to get you.”

I feel the ground shake and turn, ready to fight Hong again, but the rumbling beneath our feet isn’t stone- it’s water.

“Bastard should have thought this through. Really, there’s an underground lake ten more meters down. You want to hurt my patient, betray the avatar? Drown!” Nomak twists his hands around, fingers curled into claws. Far beneath us, I feel the lake churn and swirl, sucking at the stone and pulling at it. The swirling comes together and the whirlpool grows stronger and faster, under chunks of stone are being dragged in like sticks in the rapids. I crouch, feeling down to the pool and try to help, correcting a flow here, twisting a stream back into itself there. The result is the mountainside giving way, water bursting from the cliffs and pouring into the valley below. The two men are sucked into the vortex and thrust deeper into the caves until I can no longer feel them.

“You’re not safe here.” Ikki says, catching my attention, “we need to hide you.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere no one will look for you.” She says.

Nomak puts a hand on my shoulder and turns me to face him, “I’m taking you home. To Shu Jing island.”


End file.
